


After Action

by streetsuss_serenade



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9108583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetsuss_serenade/pseuds/streetsuss_serenade
Summary: “We’re done here, Brad,” Nate had said while walking away. But it turns out he still had things that needed saying.





	

**Author's Note:**

> As always, based solely on the characters in the HBO miniseries and nothing more.

Brad wasn’t angry. He wasn’t. Getting angry at officers for issuing dumbfuck commands was like getting angry at the sun for rising or at Rudy for losing his shirt. It was a waste of energy that, frankly, he couldn’t afford.

True, he was in the front seat poring over the Blue Force Tracker rather joining Walt, Ray, and Trombley playing President alongside the Humvee. But he wasn’t sulking, no matter what Ray said. He was working – there was no way to know which neighborhood they would be billeted in next, so it was best to study them all. Besides, Trombley was shit at President. He didn’t know any of the references, and he still refused to believe that Rutherford B. Hayes was a president, despite Walt getting Reporter to confirm it for him.

Brad had just moved from one grid square to the next when Gunny poked his head through the open doorframe, leaning in to avoid Brad’s outstretched legs.

“LT’s looking for you.”

Brad nodded, without looking up from his map. Of course he fucking was, because he didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

“I’ll head over in a minute.”

“I got the impression that it was pretty important,” Gunny said lazily. Brad looked up to see Gunny looking down at him with an expression that called bullshit on basically anything Brad could say next. Brad clearly wasn’t doing anything that couldn’t wait, so he had no excuse.

Brad was spared from even trying to explain his reluctance to hop to and find the LT when the voices on the other side of the truck went from genial to angry, quick as a flash.

“Better handle that before you go,” said Mike, pushing himself of the of the humvee and heading toward Team Two’s humvee.

Brad called back, without looking, “Ray, shut the fuck up!” He didn’t know what had gotten Trombley started, but chances were that, even if it hadn’t been Ray, Ray wasn’t helping anything. As he listened, the cacophony crystallized into the tail end of another rousing rendition of “Was President Lincoln Gay: a lecture by Ray Person.” Following this line of inquiry was an easy way to rile Trombley, which was why Ray pursued it so often. Pissing off Trombley was rapidly becoming Ray’s favorite pastime.

They had too much time on their hands. It made them all irritable. Brad was going to have to think of a way to keep his team occupied. He was thinking through exercises that wouldn’t be too hard to pull off while they were still bunking in hostile neighborhoods when a sharp drop in volume caught his attention.

“Hey, LT,” he heard Walt say, after a brief pause. “We were just talking about American History.” Brad couldn’t hear what Rat muttered, but it made Trombley squawk, so it couldn’t be good. He should really go out there and wrangle his team, but goddammit if Fick weren’t the last person he wanted to talk to right now.

The LT had told him to get out of the hole, and he’d fucking gotten out of the hole. There was no reason for Fick to be shooting him wary looks and swinging by for a debrief. He’d gotten out of the hole.

If command wanted to blow up hamlets with only women and children in them, if they wanted to excuse the massacre of children because they were near blown tanks, if they wanted to destroy neighborhoods without putting the pieces back together, that was on them. It had nothing to do with him. Brad was a Marine. He obeyed his orders.

“My understanding is that historians are still divided on that one. There are a lot of ways to interpret the evidence,” Fick said calmly. Brad didn’t need to look to know that he was wearing his “politely neutral” face. The LT wore that one a lot around Ray. He raised his voice, “Brad, if you have a moment?”

Brad unfolded himself from the front seat, grabbing his weapon and gesturing for Walt to take the radio. He fell into step behind the LT, who headed past Bravo’s Humvees toward the outer wall of the stadium. It seemed unnecessary to Brad, who had received worse dressing downs than the “you can’t put yourself at risk unnecessarily” lecture that was surely coming his way, but if the LT wanted to find some privacy, or the closest thing to privacy you could find in a soccer stadium full of grunts, before verbally smacking him down, Brad wasn’t going to argue.

As the crossed the field, Brad tried to keep his face and his mind blank. It wouldn’t do to snarl his frustration at his platoon commander for a lecture that he probably deserved. Fick couldn’t help being an officer, for all that he tried to be one of the better ones. Brad wasn’t even going to acknowledge the disappointment he’d felt when Fick had ordered him up and out. Being disappointed in an officer was for FNGs and naïfs, and Brad was neither. Officers fucked things up. It was part of the job description. Expecting different was an exercise in futility.

When they finally came to a stop by the stairs to the stands, the only Marines nearby were a quarter of the way down the field, shooting the shit and cleaning their equipment. Brad knew none of them well. 

Fick turned to him “You disagreed with my order before, in the garden.”

Brad felt a startling rush of rage. What the fuck kind of bullshit was this? He hadn’t said a goddamned thing. Was he required to police the inside of his fucking brain now, lest someone pick up his opinions via some telepathic bullshit? He opened his mouth to respond, still not entirely sure how to react to this monumental fuckery, but the LT raised a hand and waved it away.

“That’s not a question. I’m not accusing you of anything.” 

He looked Brad straight in the eye and said “It’s not about your skills, do you get that? Brad, even if you could promise me a 100% chance of success, which you can’t, I still couldn’t let you continue detonating the bombs.”

Brad was completely lost. This wasn’t the lecture he had been expecting. He wasn’t sure what this was. 

The LT worked his bottom lip between his teeth, still regarding Brad with somber eyes, watching for a reaction.

“There’s a reason we have protocols for this kind of thing, Brad.”

“Kids play in that garden.” Brad said, his voice rough. Even as he said it, he knew it was irrelevant. The safety of children was not a priority during an invasion. He didn’t know what else to say. They were Marines. They were supposed to be the best of the best. If the LT didn’t understand why having even one less shell in the garden was important, Brad didn’t know how to explain it to him.

Fick closed his eyes briefly in frustration. “Should I let Stafford detonate the next one?” he asked sharply “We have a det kit in our truck too. Should I let him go off with Meesh and an Iraqi with unknown intentions to try to rid the neighborhood of unexploded munitions?”

Brad stiffened. The LT made it sound reckless, but it wasn’t like that. He’d known what he was doing.

The excuses sounded flimsy even in his own head.

“You didn’t even establish a proper perimeter, Brad. How would you feel if some civilian, or hell, another Marine, didn’t hear the warning about your impromptu pyrotechnics and wandered into the blast zone? Not to mention the fact that when word gets out that we do bomb disposal, we’re going to be overrun with requests. It’d certainly be an easy way to divide us up and pick off a team.”

The LT took off his Kevlar and ran a hand over his head. “I know it’s ,” he paused, “frustrating to move from neighborhood to neighborhood and not be able to provide the solutions they need, but that’s not our job. That duty lies elsewhere.”

He looked very tired, propping one boot on the wall behind him and leaning back against the concrete, looking up at Brad, and Brad finally understood why they were there. Officers didn’t explain their fuckheaded decisions, because they didn’t have to. But here Nate was, explaining, because he wanted Brad to understand. Because he valued Brad’s opinion. 

Brad didn’t know what to say. He knew that everything Nate said was correct, but something inside him was stubbornly insisting that he’d been right to jump into that hole. He thought back to Nate’s words that afternoon “This is madness.” And it was. What use were all of his skills if he never got a chance to use them? So far, the most skillful thing he’d done in this war was to notice that they were being ambushed a few seconds before everyone else did. Hoofuckingrah.

Brad realized that Nate expected an answer and blurted “They’re fucking it up.”

“Sir” he tacked on hastily.

Nate looked at him for a beat, measuring. Then he nodded slowly, looking like it cost him to admit it.

It shouldn’t have made Brad feel better. Brad knew whereof he spoke; he didn’t need Nate’s acknowledgement to confirm things for him. Still it was sometimes hard to tell where the required bullshit stopped and Nate’s genuine belief began. He trusted Nate, but he didn’t understand him. Every time Nate spouted some shiny-eyed speech about being exactly where they were supposed to be, Brad felt a little disoriented, like he’d disconnected from whatever reality Nate was experiencing.

Brad wanted to ask Nate what they were doing, given that they weren’t engaging the enemy and they weren’t helping the Iraqis in the neighborhoods they were patrolling, but he knew he couldn’t. Nate was still his platoon commander. Besides, he didn’t have any answers that Brad didn’t already have. What they were doing was, in one way, clear. They were following orders.

They stood in silence for a little while longer, not sure what to do with a situation where there were no good next steps, or not ones they were permitted to take, when Nate suddenly smiled. 

“I have to ask.” Nate asked, all amused forbearance, “Were you particularly concerned about the outcome of this conversation?”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

Nate raised an eyebrow and gestured over Brad’s left shoulder. Even before he’d turned to look, he knew what he’d see. Sure enough, there was Ray, gesticulating wildly while he regaled the unfamiliar Marines down the field with one of his patented Ray Person lectures. From the look on the other men’s faces, they had no idea why Ray was there, but Brad did. Ray was covering his six. Brad felt a swell of exasperated fondness for his RTO.

Turning back to Nate, he said “The sad part is, I think he thinks he’s being subtle.”

Nate nodded with exaggerated seriousness. “That is sad. If that’s his idea of covert, we may have trouble on our hands. Should I recommend that he repeat some of his courses from BRC?”

Brad considered this. He wouldn’t really, but it was a beautiful idea. Ray would be spitting mad. “Seriously?”

Nate inclined his head. “I have a friend who owes me a favor. I might be able to enroll him for a refresher off the books.”

Brad realized that he was grinning at Nate like a fool and tamped down on his amusement. “I’ll take that under consideration.” Brad looked over to where Ray was getting even more animated as he tried to charm the group of Marines, “I should go corral him before he gets himself punched.”

When Brad looked back, Nate had straightened and was putting his Kevlar back on. He was no longer looking conspiratorial, but brisk and businesslike. He looked like Brad’s platoon  
commander again.

“Thank you, Brad.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Brad headed off to collect his wayward RTO and make sure that the rest of his team hadn’t shot Trombley and buried him in a shallow grave. Things seemed to head that way whenever Brad was away from the truck for more than a few minutes, and Poke couldn’t be counted on to stop it. Nate might be right. It wasn’t his duty to unfuck the things the Marine corps had fucked up, but he could do right by his team. He would do that at least.


End file.
